


Just Like Heaven

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Running Away, conversion therapy, obviously touchy topics here... read carefully
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:49:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24324574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: He focuses very hard on staying in the present. He counts off things he knows to be true, trying to break through the trance.My name is Fred Andrews. I’m sixteen. I went to Riverdale. I was sent here three months ago. I’ve had enough. I am running away.Fred escapes the Sisters of Quiet Mercy with the help of his friends.
Relationships: Fred Andrews & Alice Cooper & FP Jones II, Fred Andrews/FP Jones II
Comments: 15
Kudos: 26





	1. day one - morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bisexualfpjones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualfpjones/gifts).



> my apologies to bunny and artie andrews

He had seen the phone for the first time through the bus window on a trip back from Centreville, cold spring sunlight streaking in his eyes as they had rolled past the rickety wooden structure that stood a little off the main road, the wooden boards coming together at a point at the top like a bell, or a coffin. He had noticed it because it was so blue, the wood painted and peeling, and because it was something to look at among the scruffy weeds and trees that adorned the backroads into the city - their bus was too slow for the expressway that would have got them there in half the time. 

He had noted it reflexively on the next three trips into Centreville, where the nuns would periodically take them out to various evangelical bookstores to spend an hour or two stuffing pamphlets advertising the Sisters of Quiet Mercy into hardcovers. On the fourth trip he had sat up and taken notice - the faded sign that said PUBLIC PHONE and the single ordinary payphone inside, and had counted the minutes from the blue wooden structure to the gates of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, and determined it was a little over a mile from the building. 

He had estimated he could walk there in about twenty minutes, slightly more if you took into account the uphill terrain and the slight detour he’d have to take at the beginning, skirting through the woods to avoid being recognized on the main road close to the institution. He would be exposed during the rest of the walk, but twenty minutes wasn’t a lot of time for someone to notice you missing. You could do almost anything in twenty minutes if you put your mind to it. 

In the end, he had miscalculated somewhat - the uphill walk to the place in the woods where the phone booth stood took him over thirty-five, causing him to panic and consider that he had missed it somewhere in the trees, pivoting uselessly by the side of the road with his heart hammering in his throat. He hadn’t calculated for the weight of the backpack on his back, or anticipated how quickly the sun would burn through the morning fog and sear his pale skin. The cardigan protected his ghostly arms from the sun, but he had stupidly dressed in shorts, so that his calves were as pink and inflated as a blister. His roommate’s hat shielded his face from the worst of it, but his cheeks and the tip of his nose still felt hot to the touch. His mouth was dry, but he seemed to have progressed past the need for water. His burnt calves brushed periodically against patches of weed or grass, but he felt nothing like pain. 

He had expected the whole way that the phone would be broken when he reached it - the cord severed in two, the receiver smashed or simply dead and silent, but beyond his wildest dreams he had lifted it and heard a dial tone in his ear, pure as a bell. In the whispering rural silence of the empty road, it felt like a singular sign of life - a pulse or a heartbeat, the presence of another lifeform besides himself. He had been so shocked that he had stood there for several moments listening to it, feeling the energy from that dial tone radiate into his body. It was the strongest he had felt in a long time. 

When he was eight, Fred’s father had taught him to always carry an emergency quarter in the smallest pocket of his jeans, so that wherever he was he could make a phone call. Because he often had trouble with his car, and because he loved and idolized and obeyed Artie, Fred had always had one. From the meagre allowance the nuns shelled out to him from the exorbitant fees his parents paid, he kept a quarter on him at all times, as if this obedience would bring his parents back to him somehow. The rest of his money - a whopping thirteen dollars - was among the few possessions he carried on his back. 

A girl in his group had suggested they were given pocket change to make them feel less like hostages. Only approved purchases were allowed, which often meant books or stationary from trips into Centerville. It was popular to sneak off on these trips and spend your money at the ice cream shop next door, where the owner offered up free samples and commented often on what polite and well behaved kids they were. On days where Fred felt more like himself, he would buy a strawberry cone and lick it while memorizing the bible verse that hung over the waffle makers, quietly shredding the pamphlets he had failed to stuff and pushing them down in the crack between the vinyl booth and the wall. 

He could have called directory assistance and asked for help connecting, actually spoken to another human life, but he had memorized this number very carefully in case that wasn’t an option, and it seemed like a waste not to dial directly. Slowly, almost ritually, he had inserted his quarter and pressed each of the numbers that he used to call in another life when he would fake a sick day to go downtown. 

The phone rang, and he wondered if he was dreaming it. It rang three times in total, a sound he hadn’t heard for three months. There was only one phone at the Sisters, an ivory rotary phone that was kept under lock and key at the office. He had considered using it for this purpose once, but had eventually discounted it as a possible option. This short walk had been easier. 

The call picks up. 

“Riverdale High School.” 

Fred stands looking out over the road into the trees on the other side. His breath comes in rattling, sucking gasps from somewhere deep down in his lungs. The secretary on the other end made a disgusted noise, like she had decided he was praying - 

_ playing -  _

playing a prank. Fred lowers the register of his voice to sound grown-up, ducking his head so that the bill of the ball cap shields his face from the road. 

“Hello. I need to speak to a student there.” His voice is gravel from disuse, but it works to his advantage. He has played adults over the phone before, in the other life, and he knows how to be convincing. “Forsythe Jones. It’s an emergency.” 

“What kind of emergency, sir?” 

“It’s a family emergency.” Fred squeezes the hard plastic of the receiver until his knuckles are white. It seems impossible to him that she does not recognize his voice, but it sounds different even to himself - rough and unattached from him. “It’s very urgent. Please.” 

“One moment.” He hears the light sound of her fingers tapping over keys, the faint and familiar murmur of the school office before he’s put on hold. He had expected more questioning, and is frightened by the ease with which his plan is unfolding. He had steadied himself for resistance, more lies, a second or third or fourth phone call, perhaps - most of his thirteen bucks is in quarters. 

He waits. Waits. Waits. It must be forty-five minutes now. Almost an hour. It had been his plan all along that he could place this call and go back, supposing that FP might need to arrange to meet him on another day, or that it would suddenly be revealed to him that he had not adequately prepared. It would take him longer to get back than twenty minutes, but he had a cover story. A preapproved morning hike. They were more lenient with him now, after everything. 

Now, though, it seemed foolish to go back. He had a backpack packed. He was alone in the world right now, standing by the side of the road where no one knew who or where he was. He had prepared for the possibility of never going back. He knew the route that would take him northwest to the meeting place he had picked out. His legs were unexpectedly weak after the past three months, but they could carry him. It seemed suddenly urgent that he never see the Sisters of Quiet Mercy again. 

He can feel his mind slipping, the way it does when he’s stuffing pamphlets at Books For Christ, when he suddenly comes back into himself and finds an hour has passed. He can be going along thinking very sharply and methodically and then lose it all in a moment, his mind becoming unattached, hazy and dusty and dry. 

At first he had thought they were drugging him, that there was something in the drinks they served at mealtimes. A week of sealed water bottles later, he had thought it was in the food. But Fred lived off mostly bananas. You couldn’t drug bananas. They had a peel. About a week ago he had given it up and started eating the prepared food again. He needed to be strong if he was going to escape. 

He focuses very hard on staying in the present. He counts off things he knows to be true, trying to break through the trance.  _ My name is Fred Andrews. I’m sixteen. I went to Riverdale. I was sent here three months ago. I’ve had enough. I am running away.  _

The hold music clicks off, jerking him back into reality. 

Then a voice in his ear, from fifteen miles away. FP’s. 

“Hello?” 

* * *

He had started by walking east, his packed bag on his back, his dead roommate’s cap jammed on his head, cutting diagonally through the woods behind the Sisters of Quiet Mercy to come out onto the eastbound road where the phone booth was located. He had placed the call from the payphone, and now he was going to walk north, as far and as quickly away from the area around the Sisters of Quiet Mercy as possible. 

_ Stay where you are _ , FP had told him,  _ Tell me where you are _ , but Fred had refused that plan. He was only a five minute drive from the institution, and along a well-traveled and familiar road. Once they decided his hike was taking too long, they would begin the search in this direction, and it would be only too easy to scoop him up. There was equally the risk of some groundskeeper or merchant who knew the Sisters driving along and recognizing him as he walked. 

He had given FP directions to a place a little over five miles north, a picnic site that he had only seen once, when one of their buses had become stranded on the way home from a supply run. Fred, being good with engines, had been excused from chores to accompany the groundskeeper and one of the nuns out to the site. The job had turned out to be little more than sitting in the truck while the groundskeeper worked, and while he was doing that he had looked across into the woods and seen something that had hit him with a charming pang of loss. 

It was the kind of place his family would have stopped on a summer vacation to unload a cooler of cut watermelon and wrapped sandwiches, a little public verandah in the middle of nowhere. The picnic area was paved smooth, the awning a red tin roof that slanted up into a religious point among the fir trees. The tabletops were patterned as if for checkers, and rather than flat benches, each seat was circular and attached to the table by a leg of stone. The encroaching trees hid it mostly from the road, providing dappled shade and a sprinkling of pine needles. There was no parking lot: perhaps it was meant more for the visitors of the hiking trails. Though he was some twelve feet away from it, Fred had known precisely what the seats would feel like, what it would be like to lay his cheek on that table. 

They had driven back, and the nun and groundskeeper had grumbled to each other about the trip while Fred stared out the window with a rapt attention he hadn’t had in weeks. He had memorized the road signs, memorized every landmark. That was the day after he had decided to run away, and though he’d never tell anyone, the picnic area seemed like a prayer being answered. 

During days of independent study he had memorized the trails, tracing the veins of them up into the hills beyond the woods. The meeting place sat beside Highway 15, the length of which was dotted with crops and farms and the occasional tattered homestead. It felt far enough away to be safe, yet not so far that he couldn’t reach it on foot. It wasn’t a route their vehicles traveled often, which made it perfect for his escape. 

_ If I’m not there, wait for me _ , he had instructed FP, and FP would. Fred could make it there. He knew he could make it. 

Walking was repetitive and soothing, somehow easier now that he had made it to his first stop, the payphone, though he moved slower than he would have liked. He followed the highway at a safe distance, walking parallel to the road with a thick barrier of trees between himself and passing traffic. In about a half-mile, he would turn at the mouth of a path and head deeper into the woods to find the hiking trails. 

Telephone poles stretched parallel to the highway, cutting lines across the sky. The air was dry and hot, the collar of his shirt damp with sweat before the sun had reached its peak. The brush in this uncharted territory was thick, and his feet caught repeatedly on roots and stones as he doggedly pushed his way forward. The grass was long here, tall blades and towering dandelions hitting just below his knees, while nettles sliced at the vulnerable skin of his legs and thighs. His cheeks and forehead were caught by the hanging branches, and no matter how much he ducked, they scooped and gouged at the flesh of his face like needles. 

Occasionally a rocky outcropping or a fallen tree blocked his path, sometimes forcing him deeper into the brush to avoid them. Breath burst in hard, tired gasps past his lips, but he kept going, keeping the far-off hum of traffic on his left. There was a purpose in walking away, and he put a little extra push into every step, as if to remind himself that every step carried him further away from that place, closer to the place where FP was waiting for him. 

He walked in a trancelike step, his mind focused only on the task at hand, a coping mechanism he had developed to keep from going insane. His thoughts were comfortingly blank, and when reality intruded he pretended he was home, and this was summer, and once he met FP they were going to do something incredibly fun together. He found the trails and turned onto them, birds singing in the trees above him, the sun caressing the back of his blistered neck, walking diligently as the sun heightened in the sky until he was forced to stop for the first time. 

The backpack, which contained little more than a water bottle and some clothes, was so heavy to him that it felt like his lungs would burst from carrying it. Taking it off, he found it had dug deep impressions into the hollows of his shoulders. He touched one gingerly, a deep red line like what you’d get from wearing too-tight clothes. They were raw and painful. 

Fred sank onto a nearby rock, uncapping his water bottle and taking shaky inventory of himself. His shoes are bloody: deep scratches on his legs had run down into the socks and soaked into the thin canvas. They were cheap shoes, supplied as part of the required uniform at the Sisters, and even walking on the stone floors for too long made his feet hurt. They were not made for this kind of travel. 

By the position of the sun in the sky, and the exhaustion he feels in his muscles, he estimates he’s been walking about an hour. He squints into the blue sky, shielding his eyes from the sun that burned through the gathering of trees. By the highway there had been the occasional wooden fence, here there is no other sign of human life besides the obviously man-made trail. The hum of traffic had been swallowed by the sounds of birdsong: he found it comforting, rather than eerie, though it heightened his sense of loneliness. He fanned himself with the baseball cap, the rim of it dark with sweat. Continuing on this path was his only option. Somewhere ahead of him was the picnic area, and at that place FP would be waiting for him. 

The backpack is heavier when he puts it back on, and he sits down again to check its contents. A spare set of clothes, a folded map, the waterbottle, an apple, thirteen dollars. It was currently all he had in the world. The heaviest item was obviously the water, yet it was too essential to leave behind. He compromises by taking another sip and tightening the straps of the pack, wincing as they settle back onto the inflamed skin. 

A fit, healthy teenager, the person he used to be, could have made the walk in under two hours. He’s walked for another half hour, slower, when it occurs to him that this won’t be the case for him. He’s had to make up the distance from the Sisters to the phone booth as well, an additional twenty minutes he hadn’t accounted for. The determination in him is fading, and the blissful, monotonous emptiness of his mind is going with it. Now his thoughts are sharp, his head buzzing with unpleasant possibilities. 

He doesn’t dare stop again, conscious of wasting time. Hunger had begun to gnaw at him around ten-o-clock, the sensation oddly foreign. Fred had stupidly decided against packing a lunch, having had little to no appetite for the past month. Walking had awakened it in him, though, and the apple he had impulsively grabbed from the kitchen was all he had. 

Some boy scout he was. He had disregarded the most important rule of preparedness. This morning his plan had seemed perfect, now he knew that there were many things that could go wrong. He eats half his apple, no longer bothering to push aside the branches that dangled in his face. 

Why had he chosen to walk so far? Suppose he wandered off the path and was lost, dying a lonely death from starvation while FP idled some three miles ahead, not knowing where to look for him. Two hours had seemed simple on paper, the track straight and easy to follow, and he had not prepared for the possibility it would take longer.  _ I have a map, _ he reminded himself,  _ I’m on a trail,  _ but it scared him that he was moving so slow. The muscles in his calves and thighs feel taut, his steps small and taxing, as though he had weights attached to his ankles. 

He pulls his roommate’s hat down further on his sweaty forehead, doggedly continuing his journey. Yes, he had been stupid. But he had done more than one or two things right, had made this plan carefully and had stuck to it, had accomplished his escape alone with an addled, failing mind. He had planned to meet FP, and he would. All he had to do was keep walking. 

_ I’ve saved myself _ , he thought, and was minutely cheered. _ I am going to the picnic area. FP will come get me, and I will be saved.  _

It’s a funny thought, because he’s running from eternal salvation, the thing they were all promised when they stepped through the Sisters gates. Fred knew better than that now. A part of him had always known that place wouldn’t help him. 

He’s walked for what he believes is another hour. The sun’s searing down, the woods impenetrable and unfamiliar. He’s gasping for breath as he walks, as though the clean air surrounding him is water. His mind is foggy, and he’s forgotten everything but the objective of his hike. Walk. Get there. Sweat glues his hair down to his forehead, and his muscles and throat burn. 

Discomfort turns to actual pain. The simple motion of walking is causing his heart to beat so hard in his throat that it feels like he’s being punched. He stops and waits briefly to die of a heart attack, but it never comes. Quietly, he begins to walk again. 

After the next quarter-mile his head begins to throb, and rationed swallows of his bottled water do nothing to alleviate the pulsing pain in his temples. His legs begin to feel jumpy, disconnected, like he’s been running a marathon instead of just walking. Twice he freezes, thinking with an irrational pang of worry that he’s lost, and then he pushes the thoughts aside. He had a map. He would not be lost. 

All the same, the relief he feels when he finds the junction of paths that mark the nearness of the picnic area is like a bucket of cold water thrown in his face. He almost prays. He pushes through a grove of trees towards the rumbling of traffic, louder now, and begins to run for the shady, paved picnic area with the red tin roof. Trees encircle it, leaving a gap through which the highway is visible. On his tired legs, he feels like dancing. He’d made it. He’d walked all the way here. 

Legs shaking, he stumbles to the stone benches and falls down. His cheek kisses the smooth checkerboard surface of the table, cool and tacky against his skin. The backpack seems to have fused to his shoulder blades now, and he leaves it on. Stupid, he chastises himself for his worry. You made it. 

He looks to the mouth of the opening, but sees no trace of a vehicle. Panic flares in him again, his heartbeat filling his throat. He had expected to find FP waiting. Where was he? Suppose he wasn’t coming at all. Suppose he’d been stopped. Suppose he’d waited and left. Suppose Fred had no way to reach him. 

Stars and black spots flash in front of his eyes, the sunlight making them brighter and more dizzying. He uncaps his water bottle and is about to take a drink with shaking hands when the van pulls into sight. Their van. 

FP. Hearing his voice over the phone had been one thing, but now it was real. It breaks into his fevered mind somehow with real urgency, and somehow he’s scrambling to his feet, ignoring the ache in his joints. Alice’s scared face looks out at him through the passenger side window. Fred runs towards her, ignoring the fuzzy aura that has risen abruptly in half of his eye. Someone shouts his name. FP has thrown open the drivers’ side door and is pounding around the hood towards him, running with arms outstretched to hold him tight. 

Fred collapses more than runs into his arms, flinging his arms around FP’s neck and squeezing tightly, burying his damp face into the crook of his shoulder and squeezing his eyes shut against the tears. He inhales the now-unfamiliar scent of home, feeling his legs give out for good as he falls into the cool blackness of FP’s shoulder. FP seems so wonderfully solid, so _ real  _ and strong. He must be choking him, his arms around his neck like that, but FP doesn’t react. Only holds him. 

He feels Alice’s arms encircle them from behind, joining the hug. For a second that lasts an eternity, the three of them stand there entwined. Fred has the feeling of being held up between his mother and father - 

Though he doesn’t think about his mother and father anymore. 

“Get in the van!” he rasps suddenly, and his voice, disused for so long, comes out in a croak. Both of their eyes widen at his urgency, and he takes a shaky step towards the vehicle, dragging the two of them with him as the sunlight pierces his eyes like knives. “Get back in the van, we have to go. We have to drive away.” 

Alice gets into the front quickly, slides into the drivers’ side, and buckles herself in. FP lifts him into the next seat, and climbs in, slamming the door behind him. 

“Where are we going?” Alice’s voice. She’s asking FP, not him, but Fred speaks up. 

“Keep going north.” The shaking is in his arms now, his teeth chattering, and it takes the last of his strength to form the words. “Just keep driving, don’t turn around.” 

The motor rattles to life. FP's hand lands on his shoulder, but Fred pulls away as the van begins to roll, dives towards the backseat as they creep up to speed. As the trees begin to march away behind them, he scrambles on his hands and knees to the back of the van and watches the road disappear behind the back door window until the red tin roof is out of sight. 


	2. day one - afternoon & evening

“Keep driving.” Fred’s fingers tighten on the faded upholstery separating the front of the van from the back, his knees bearing the brunt of his weight as he stares at the unfolding road over Alice’s shoulder. 

“I’m driving, Fred.” Alice presses down a little more on the gas, the dilapidated van beginning to rattle as the sun-baked pavement streaks away below its tires. “We’re going to get as far from here as we can, and when it’s safe we’ll stop and talk, okay?” 

It’s the third time she’s said this to him. They’ve been streaking down this highway under the relentless sun for the better part of ten miles, and no pursuants have yet appeared, indeed no signs of life besides the occasional crow feasting on a squashed groundhog. Fred’s gaze had been glued to the rear window at first, but now he switches it frantically from side to side, kneeling every so often to stare over Alice’s shoulder out the windshield as though alert for an invisible enemy. 

As he had done the first two times under her reassurance, Fred sinks back down to the filthy mattress in the back of the van, his back nestling flat against the wall. He draws up his bloody knees to his chest, looking out at FP with frightened animal eyes. FP wants to touch him, if only to assure himself that he’s real, but doesn’t dare with that look in his eyes. Fred’s shaking like a dog waiting to be kicked. Sun falls down upon them from the skylight in a perfect square, but Fred moves his feet out of the way. 

“Freddie, your legs,” FP manages in a hoarse voice, both question and concern. Fred’s shins, from knee to ankle, are smeared with great streaks of bright crimson blood. Fred ignores him, eyes glazed, turning his head back to Alice. 

“If you find another highway, take it,” he directs her, his voice hoarse and very unlike the playful tones FP remembered from their last conversation, three months prior. “We have to keep moving so they don’t find me.” 

“Who’s they?” FP snaps, too sharply. His eyes are glued to Fred: his broad forehead, his sunburned nose, the hollow of his cheeks, staring as though the very act of looking will keep Fred from disappearing again. Sweat is coating Fred’s temples in a fine mist. 

“The Sisters,” Alice answers, her blue eyes finding them in the rearview mirror. “That’s who you’re talking about, isn’t it, Fred?” 

Fred doesn’t answer. He folds back in on himself, legs drawing up, arms around his knees. His huge eyes fix on FP’s face from below the brim of a ragged baseball cap, the skin of his face marred with scratches. His outfit seems to have been assembled in the dark: a button-up blue shirt with the collar torn, a pair of too-big navy shorts. The remains of a burgundy cardigan hang around his shoulders, the long, ragged sleeves covering his wrists. Fred starts to pull them into his hands, rocking a little back and forth with his eyes fixed on nothing. 

FP’s lip starts to tremble involuntarily as he watches him. This didn’t seem to be the same person who, ten minutes ago, had flung himself into FP’s arms with such abandon. The desperation fit, but nothing else. Fred’s terrified eyes look through him without seeing. 

“Your legs,” he tries again, swallowing hard to find a note of strength. “Alice, in the glove box there’s a first aid kit-” 

She reaches over and fumbles with it, tosses the plastic container back at them with one hand. Her eyes meet him briefly in the mirror again, and they share a mutual look of deep concern. Uncharacteristically, Alice doesn’t speak. FP has an uncomfortable feeling she’s keeping the ball in his court, as though he would somehow know what to do or say. He doesn’t, and there’s a stab of annoyance at her for seemingly knowing more than him, but his hands move all on their own as though he knows subconsciously what needs to be done, opening the box, rifling through the bandages. 

“What’s the Sisters?” he asks her, locating a spool of bandages and some alcohol-soaked wipes. Fred’s head drops onto his chest, his body shuddering with the vibration of the van over the uneven pavement. Alice flicks her eyes at him in the rearview mirror, a gesture FP translates as _not right now,_ and he tries furiously to squash the hot clench of anger that seizes his throat. Alice had no right to keep things from him. Not when Fred was concerned. 

“Here, Freddie,” he offers gently, ignoring his temper as he rummages in an abandoned gym bag for a water bottle. The van has one bench seat in front: they’d long ago removed the seats from the back to make room for band equipment, and the square of space in which they’re sitting houses a tattered mattress and a scattering of assorted junk. Beach blankets and sports equipment are wedged indiscriminately in the corners and around the wheel wells. FP wets a tissue from the first aid kid, intending to wipe the blood off his legs, but Fred pulls the water bottle out of his hands and dumps it over the skin himself. Pink blood runs onto the mattress, diluted with water. It must sting, but Fred doesn’t react. 

“Let me,” FP says quietly, reaching towards Fred’s battered legs with his tissue. He’s relieved to see that the scratches, as they appear out of the grime, seem shallow and superficial. His socks and shoes, dyed red, seem beyond saving. 

Fred only stares at him, but he doesn’t pull away as FP gently dries his legs and tends to them with alcohol. This surely stings worse, but Fred just sits as though made out of stone. He’s removed the ball cap from his head, his hair bedraggled with sweat, and is wringing it in his hands, turning it over and over. 

Shock, FP thinks with a bolt of horror - he’s in shock. It seems obvious now, but Fred was the lifeguard, not him, this plastic box they were rifling through had belonged to Fred first. FP’s knowledge of first aid extended only to camouflaging whatever his father did to him - a pretty hefty arsenal, all things considered, but by no means complete. He looks frantically around for a blanket and is relieved to find one of their stargazing quilts wadded in a corner of the backseat. FP retrieves it and wraps it snugly around Fred’s shoulders, whose wide-eyed expression doesn’t change. 

“You’re okay, Freddie,” he says aloud, the conviction in his voice stronger than what he feels. Their eyes meet as he rubs warmth into Fred’s arms, and he sees a momentary calm settle into the dark brown for the first time. Fred’s shoulders slump, and FP prepares to catch him in a steadying embrace. Then it’s gone in an instant as Fred abruptly bolts up to his knees, throwing the blanket to the floor of the van. 

“Why are you stopping?” he screams, clutching the back of Alice’s seat as the van slows down. “Keep driving!” 

“There’s a-” Alice begins, but Fred suddenly throws himself down on the mattress, his arms over his head. FP sees it now in the rearview mirror: a police car with its lights circling, speeding towards them out of the dust. 

Their van crawls along at a glacial pace, half on the roadside, gravel crackling loudly under their tires. Fred’s panic is infectious, and FP’s heart starts to hammer in his throat. He has to resist the urge to throw himself on top of Fred, finally dropping to the mattress and wrapping his arms around him, shielding him from view. The siren wails, and then the police car streaks by them without stopping, disappearing into the horizon. 

“It’s not necessarily for you,” Alice says, eyes fixed on the vehicle as it speeds into the distance. She’d stopped the van at last, and they sit looking down the dusty roadside towards the skyline. On each side of the van are nothing but wheat fields, sectioned off from the highway by a knee-high wire fence. The muggy June air swallows the sound of the siren so that they’re left alone in silence. “I doubt they’re the kind of place that would want the cops involved.” 

Fred sits up, even paler now, so that the streak of sunburn across his nose stands out in sharp relief. His face is drawn and haggard, as though the momentary panic had sapped all his energy. He looks much older than the person FP remembered. Fred stares out the front window for a long moment, then looks suddenly at FP as though seeing him for the first time. Tears well up in his tired eyes. 

“FP.” He says it the way you would say the name of a person you thought was dead. FP sees that flicker of clarity in his eyes again, and his heart gives a hopeful lurch. 

“I’m here, Freddie.” He squeezes Fred’s fingers and turns back to Alice, furious with her for seemingly knowing something he doesn’t. “What place, Alice?” Fred’s grip is so weak that it’s almost imperceptible, his fingers ice cold in FP’s palm. FP covers both of his hands protectively with his. “How do you know what we’re dealing with? What’s the Sisters?” 

“I’m a journalist. I did some digging.” Alice’s eyes fill the rearview mirror again, unhappiness reflected in the deep blue irises. “But I hoped I was wrong.” 

Anger flares in FP’s stomach. “Yeah? When the hell were you going to share that with me? You had the whole drive up here to fill me in! If you hadn’t caught me on my way out, you wouldn’t even be here!” 

“Keep driving,” Fred orders, his voice wavering just a little. “Please can we keep driving?” 

As Alice pulls the van back onto the road, Fred unexpectedly grabs FP around the neck and hugs him. Though he’s holding him closely, the embrace is as feeble as a child’s. His face buries into the gap between FP’s neck and shoulder, his hot breath stinging FP’s skin. FP holds him in return, the sweat and grime of him, the firm shape of his body. He can feel Fred’s heartbeat racing against his chest like he’s run a marathon. 

“Shhh,” he murmurs, pressing one hand to Fred’s heart, trying to slow it by force of will. Tears streak down Fred’s sunburned face, seemingly endless. FP wipes them with the back of his hand. “Who did this to you?” His voice is gentle, his heart seizing with pain. “Who hurt you?” 

“My parents.” Fred chokes out the words, his voice shaky, but the answer is unmistakable. “They sent me-” 

But he starts to cry, then, earnestly, the rest of the sentence gone. The unanswered questions are pulsing inside FP’s head like a heartbeat, his throat thick and his hands trembling with barely contained rage. Fred had been missing for three months. He couldn’t begin to imagine the kind of mistreatment he’d been through if this was the state he was in. And to have his suspicions confirmed that Fred’s parents were in on it, that they’d been lying to him all this time -- 

He maneuvers them so that Fred’s nestled into his lap, the filthy, sweaty crown of his head against FP’s chin. He bites back his fury, trying to quell the voice in his head that’s screaming for answers. It’s clear that Fred’s in no shape to give them, at least not until they distance themselves a little from whatever nightmare he’s running from. FP drops his face into Fred’s sweaty hair, inhaling the smell of sun and outside. Fred’s still clutching the ball cap in his shaking hands, the fabric crumpled between his fingers. He’s sobbing, crying hard, the good kind of empty-yourself-out crying. His sunburned legs tremble against the floor of the van. 

“Hey,” FP croons softly to him, conscious of Alice watching them from her rectangle of mirror. “Hey, hey, hey. I’m right here.” He keeps his voice as even as he can, not trusting himself to keep the anger in him from exploding. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.” 

Fred’s eyes are vacant again, like something is missing. “I got out.” 

“Yeah. You did.” 

They sit like that for a moment, Fred hiccuping and shivering, before he seems to collect himself again, jams the ball cap back on his head and bites his lip. FP seems to be witnessing him bouncing from extreme to extreme: one moment catatonic, then hyper-paranoid and frantic, then suddenly tough and rational. Fred pulls himself together, wiping clean streaks through the mottled skin of his face. 

“They shouldn’t look for me this way.” His voice is very small. “They don’t know which way I came. They’ll think I went back home if I was running. They think I walked back towards home.” 

He looks at FP, wide-eyed again, as though willing him to understand. FP nods, and a look of trust overtakes Fred’s features, so earnest that FP feels like crying. He forces him to take a few sips of water, supporting the bottle as he holds it to Fred’s lips. 

Carefully, FP begins to gently undress him, removing the shredded cardigan and the sweat-drenched shirt. Beneath the tattered clothes he’s painfully thin, his skin ghostly pale where the sun couldn’t reach. FP replaces them with one of his clean gym shirts, easing the cheap canvas shoes off Fred’s feet as gently as if he were a toddler. 

The small motions of being dressed and undressed seem to sap Fred’s energy entirely. His head sags down towards his chest again, his hands beginning to tremble until the shaking moves throughout his whole body. Dark, tired shadows crease the skin below his eyes, tears running silently down his burnt cheeks of their own accord. 

“Ssh…” FP soothes him, wrapping an arm around Fred’s shoulders and slowly easing him down onto the mattress. Fred keeps trembling, his forehead slick with sweat. “Lie down. It’s okay. You’re safe now.” 

Alice’s eyes are wet when they meet in the mirror, and FP feels more helpless than ever, even after three months of searching and wondering. 

“You’re safe now,” he repeats as Fred hunches his shoulders in, sniffling and miserable. FP trails his fingers along Fred’s chin, wiping the tears away. “We’re not going to let anything happen.” 

He can’t tell if he’s gotten through to him or not. Fred’s gone back to staring vacantly into space, his damp eyes fixed on the unfolding road behind the back window. 

* * *

Even after opening all of the van’s windows for fresh air, FP gets nauseous sitting in the back. He’s sitting on the mattress next to Fred, his head against one of the cracked windows, two of his fingers hooked around two of Fred’s to keep them connected. Fred’s semi-conscious, but FP wouldn’t call it resting. For about five minutes he’d actually been sleeping, but now his eyes are open and his lips are moving, mumbling something too low to hear. Once or twice FP had succeeded in getting him to sip some water, but between these interactions he lay as lifelessly on the mattress as a corpse. 

“How is he?” Alice asks from the front seat. She’s kept the van at a steady pace for the last fifteen miles, following the silent highway as it curved through trees and farms. It’s well past their lunch hour, about quarter after two, and FP knows they’ll be marked missing from their afternoon classes. Chances are whoever’s looking for Fred knows he’s gone too, if they hadn’t already. FP still hasn’t wanted to pry out the circumstances of his escape, or indeed even where he’d been escaping _from._

“In and out,” FP replies, looking down at Fred’s drawn face. The van lurches over a pothole, and his stomach feels briefly weightless. “Can you pull over?” 

“He’ll start screaming again,” Alice warns. The few times they’d tried to stop, Fred had panicked and demanded they keep driving. 

FP wets his lips, closing his eyes briefly against the pointed sunlight. “Alice, pull over.” 

His desperation must have finally registered because she turns the van off into the gravel. FP jumps out immediately, all but sprinting to the side of the road to throw up into the bushes. His stomach grips with a painful cramp, and he falls to his knees to vomit a second time, taking great gulps of fresh air to steady himself when the heaving passes. 

He’s preoccupied enough with the task at hand that he doesn’t notice the crunch of gravel that means someone’s standing over him. He glances up and is surprised to see Fred there, looking sad and contrite as he blots out FP’s sun. 

“You get sick,” Fred says softly, twisting his hands. “The backseat. I forgot.” 

FP wipes his mouth, conscious of the diamond-sharp grit digging into his palms as he shoves himself up onto his knees in the hot dirt. He doesn’t know what to say, but Fred seems more _there_ than he has all morning, and it feels necessary to say _something._

“Yeah well,” he offers feebly. “Better out than in.” 

Fred doesn’t even crack a pity smile, instead he continues to look deeply troubled. FP reaches up a hand for Fred to pull him to his feet, but Fred’s shaky grip and subsequent tug on his arm is so weak that he ends up doing the work himself. 

Alice climbs out of the front seat and crosses the road towards them, all business. “Switch with me,” she says, tossing FP the keys in an easy underhand before stretching. “Freddie, you wanna ride up front between us?” 

The second they’re into the bench seat in the front of the van, Fred scooches as close to FP’s side as is physically possible, his thigh glued to FP’s thigh and his head tucking into the crook of FP’s shoulder. FP lifts his hand to the wheel and sets his foot on the gas tentatively, doing his best not to jostle Fred away from him. He wraps an arm around Fred’s back to reach for the clutch, and it feels like a sick reversal of the old dating cliche, an excuse invented to hold a lover. Alice’s eyes meet his, and then she looks away. 

“Where are we?” FP asks, getting a good look at the baked asphalt road for the first time. The hand that isn’t around Fred shakes slightly as he raises a bottle of water to his lips, flushing the taste of vomit from his mouth. The long, winding stretch of highway ahead of them looks lonely and rural, something like the backroads they’d take to the shore, or to Fred’s family cottage in the summer. He doesn’t recognize the scrub brush on either side. 

“Highway 15.” Alice is unfolding a water-stained map from the door of the van, squinting at the outer edge. “We’re coming up to Highway 7, and I say we take it and keep going northwest. We’ll make it to some town called Cold Springs in about half an hour, which should be almost the end of our tank of gas. Then we can reconvene.” 

She directs the instructions to FP, but both of them are waiting for Fred to comment, to offer some hint as to what he had gone through, what they were running from, where they should go. But Fred only stares out the windshield, the weight of his body very light on FP’s arm, his hands ice cold where he grips FP’s forearm like a life preserver. FP takes one of Fred’s trembling hands in his and rubs it to warm it up. Then he takes a deep, nervous breath and puts the van in gear. 

No one’s touched the radio: it seems inappropriate somehow. Fred falls asleep as they start driving again, his head resting against FP’s arm. FP touches his forehead on reflex, a very, very, buried memory of his own mama checking his skin for fever, but Fred’s face is cool. FP frowns. 

“Alice, he’s freezing.” 

Alice lays a hand on Fred’s cheek, her mouth set in a worried line. As FP had, she picks up one of Fred’s limp hands and starts to massage warmth into it, rubbing it between her two palms. “I’ll get a blanket,” she murmurs finally, and turns to drag the same moth-eaten quilt out of the backseat. She wraps it carefully around Fred and smooths his hair back under the hat, the gesture painstakingly maternal. FP thinks of Bunny, and the hand holding the clutch tightens into a trembling fist. 

FP follows the turn-off for Highway Seven without circumstance. He keeps his eyes on the road, his voice low and even to keep from waking Fred as they merge into slightly more substantial traffic. 

“What’s the Sisters?” he asks grimly. 

Alice is chewing nervously on her fingernails, a habit she reverts to when she doesn’t have a cigarette handy. “Depends who you ask,” she replies. 

“Don’t play games with me,” FP snaps, his temper wrought. “I deserve to know.” 

Alice is silent for a moment. The hangnail she’s been chewing has begun to bleed. Then she heaves a sigh, relating the story in a low, grim voice: 

“I was in the library, trying to see if I could track down any other cases of students who dropped out of school suddenly, without warning. I didn’t think it was going to amount to anything, to be honest. Then I found this one kid, Thomas Brown, in the early eighties, who just stopped appearing everywhere. The Blue and Gold published an article about the tennis team, and he was a big shot on it before he disappeared. They falsely reported that he was leaving Riverdale to continue his education at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy private school. 

Only thing is, the Sisters of Quiet Mercy isn’t registered with the school board. Turns out, it’s not a school at all, it’s a rehab centre for drug and alcohol abuse. Or a group home. Or a convent. Or a hospital, or a midwife training centre, or an orphanage. Depends on what source you’re looking at. Oh, and they must have edited the article, because only the copy on microfiche had that line about the Sisters. The copy in the stacks didn’t have it, and they’d fixed a bunch of typos on the main page as well. So someone must have wanted it out, and they rewrote the article after the first printing.” 

FP blinks, mulling it over. His heart feels ice-cold. “You said it was drug rehab?” 

“Possibly. I started digging into the Sisters more, and there was no straight answer as to what it actually is. But, two years ago, the city council passed a vote on whether or not to continue funding a bunch of projects, and the Sisters of Quiet Mercy was on the list. Only this time, it was called a charitable organization, and they made it sound like it was a Salvation Army-type deal. The city council voted to keep it, and they won by a single vote. So I got a list of city council members from that year, thinking I could interview one of them. And Lewis Cooper was on the list.” 

“Hal’s dad?” 

“Right. And Hal’s dad and Fred’s dad are-” 

“Buddies.” FP tries to fight down the cold swell of anger rising in his chest. “Coop knew about this?” 

“Hal had nothing to do with this,” Alice retorts. “Don’t even try. He helped me look. I got him to break into his dad’s office, and he found some paperwork from that meeting. Not only was Lewis on the board who approved funding, but he actually fought to keep the Sisters open. And Artie’s name was in that file.” 

FP swallows hard. It tastes like bile. “What else?” 

“I called Mr. Cooper and pretended I was writing an article about some other city council bullshit, and I got the topic around to the Sisters. All I could get out of him was that it was focused on ‘improving the quality of life of the town’s youth’. He called it a _worthwhile initiative_. He seemed busy, so I asked if there was anyone else on the city council I could talk to about it. And sure enough, he gave up Artie Andrews.” 

FP’s jaw has started to ache from clenching. “This is sick.” 

“I think it’s rehab. Or some kind of unregistered juvenile hall. But I don’t know for sure.” Her gaze flickers down to Fred, whose eyes are closed against FP’s shoulder. Her meaning comes across clearly: that one of the three people in this car knows the truth. “Whatever it is, I think we know now it’s not exactly idyllic.” 

“And how long have you known this?”

“I found out this stuff a couple of days ago. I haven’t been keeping anything from you on purpose. I wanted to be sure before we did anything drastic. I swear.” 

FP breathes out heavily through his nose. When Fred had disappeared three months ago, Alice hadn’t wanted to do anything drastic either, though it was clear from the start that something was badly wrong. Fred was simply there one day and gone the next, pulled out of school even before the end of the baseball season, which Riverdale had finished with a miserable standing. No one knew where he’d gone. His parents had told different stories to different people, reassuring FP that he was visiting a sick aunt in Boston, but refusing to provide an address for him. 

FP had decided after two weeks of misery that he and Alice needed to leave the school to find him. Fuck the plan, FP had said, we figure it out as we go, but we go _now_ \- and Alice had shaken her head, her face grave and her mouth taut, like she didn’t like it any better than him. 

_If we get tripped up something worse could happen,_ she had said, _we can’t do this all on the fly._ Then she’d done what always annoyed him and had started listing off all the things that could possibly go wrong, all the factors they hadn’t yet thought through, not knowing what was really going on. They had no evidence, nothing to go on. She had decided they needed a plan first, that they should waste time investigating the truth. 

But Alice was breaking down, he could tell. Three months was a long time to wonder. They had both searched high and low every day for answers, and all FP was sure about was that Artie and Bunny were in on it. No amount of determination on either of their parts could get them to give. 

Just as he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the call had come in. FP had picked up the phone that morning and gasped at the sound of Fred’s voice, cursed out loud in the office lobby. He had wanted to scream his best friend’s name, but held his tongue under the suspicious eye of the school secretary. He had listened while Fred laid out directions to the place where he was running. FP had promised to be there. Had he not run into Alice while bolting towards the parking lot, he probably would have left her behind, though it was a relief not to be doing this alone. 

Twenty minutes later a highway sign for Cold Springs, population 17,000, confirms their destination. Neither he nor Alice speaks, both lost in their own thoughts. Fred continues to sleep bundled between them as FP takes the exit, his head slipping slightly down FP’s arm with the curve. 

“Where do I stop?” FP asks quietly as they enter the town, passing a white clapboard rec centre and a brown brick church. Alice points up ahead. 

“Gas station, and we might as well get something to eat. Then, I don’t know.” She bites her lip. “We’ll need to buy a better map, anyway, I’ve never been this far north.” 

Fred wakes as they slow to a stop at a Sunoco, yawning and rubbing his eyes. It was typically Fred who pumped gas - he usually lept out of the van on occasions like these, barefoot and jubilant as FP scrounged up coins to pay for the van’s ample tank and shuffled his way to the cash. FP can tell Alice is remembering it too. FP can’t help but wonder morbidly, and with a horrid pang of loss, if that side of Fred is gone for good. 

“I’ll pump,” she says softly, putting a hand on FP’s shoulder. “You two go inside and get something to eat.” 

A blinking sign for an ATM fills the grimy window over the ice chest. FP touches his wallet reflexively, aware for the first time that money was going to be an issue. He had a ten-dollar bill and some change on him, enough for food, but not exactly an ample running-away allowance. Thankfully he’d recently begun to store all his money in his bookbag, keeping it on him to prevent his father from stealing it for booze. That meant he had access to his entire current savings in cash, which amounted to about ninety dollars. He hoped Alice was more solvent. 

He keeps a hand on Fred’s arm as they scope out the aisles of snack foods, FP nudging Fred every so often to point out his favourites. Fred stares at the chips and candy bars as though he’s never seen them before. Finally FP chooses for them, stacking chips, beef jerky, chocolate, and several bottles of water on the counter. He throws a map of the region on top, and waits for Alice to join them. Fred stays glued to his side, looking around nervously. Even in new clothes, with his legs clean, he looks the worse for wear: his face is grimy under the hat, and he’s shivering like a sick dog. FP reaches down below the counter and squeezes his hand, just once. 

The elderly clerk is friendly to them, and offers them greasy gas station hot dogs free of charge. FP finishes his in three bites. Alice hurries in the front door to pay, taking crisp bills out of her wallet and pushing them across the counter with a blank smile. As the cashier rings them up, FP follows her gaze to the ATM in the corner. A hand lettered sign is taped across it: OUT OF SERVICE. 

“They should turn the sign in the window off if it’s broken,” Alice comments impudently as they leave, in a voice that reminds FP uncannily of Hal’s mother. It signals to him that they have the same concern, though: where and how they’re going to get the money to pay for the next tank of gas. FP thinks longingly of the tip jar at the White Wyrm - he, Alice, and Gladys all dipped into it occasionally, and he had meant to go there on the weekend to see if he could beat Gladys to the juicy fifty he’d spotted on the bottom. He’d give almost anything to have that money at his command now. 

Fred is still holding his hot dog, taking tiny, hesitant bites as though the concept of a hot dog is foreign to him. As Alice and FP spread the map out over the hood, he starts picking pieces of the bun, rolling them between his fingers, and tentatively putting them in his mouth. 

“Freddie, come here,” Alice says, weighing down a corner of the map with their bag of purchases. Fred joins their huddle, and Alice rests her hand gently on his back. “How are you feeling? Do you want more water?” 

“I’m okay,” Fred says softly, sounding anything but. FP reaches up and places his hand against Fred’s shoulder, trying to infuse meaning into the gesture. _I’m here._

Alice has removed a pen from her bookbag, idly circling the town of Cold Springs. She runs the cap of the pen down to the town marked RIVERDALE, pursing her lips as her eyes flicker over the surrounding cities. 

“Freddie, can you show me where the Sisters is?” 

Fred bends so closely that the bill of his cap almost touches the hood, looking at the map for a long time. Then his finger tentatively presses into a grove of trees. 

“There.” 

Alice and FP lean forward at the same time, their heads almost colliding. There’s no buildings or schools marked on the map, but it’s not far from the red vein of Highway 15, and the thin line of a road connects it to the main roadway. Fred studies the map with a look of intense concentration, picking chunks off his hotdog bun and dropping them to the ground. 

“Okay,” says Alice calmly, but FP detects a note of pain in her voice. She marks out the spot with a dark X, and jots SISTERS beside the space. “Can you show me where we picked you up? Do you know?” 

FP stares at the back of Fred’s head as he leans over the map again. Something that Alice had said keeps nagging at him - this Sisters of Quiet Mercy place was listed as a drug rehab. Of all the explanations Alice had offered, that one was the most jarring, and the most plausible. 

Could Fred have been mixed up in drugs? It was awful, but it fit: it was the only thing he could imagine Fred’s parents being serious enough about to send him away in secret. There are a few other coincidences too: Alice had said that the other kid who had been sent there was the star of the tennis team, and then there was Fred, halfway through a successful baseball season. 

FP can think of numerous occasions of locker room talk where guys bragged about what drugs they were doing after games, though he felt pretty confident most of them had done little more than puff on a joint. Still, shit was readily available at Riverdale High if you knew where to look. And then there was the possibility of performance enhancers - there had been some scandal in the fall about someone at Westbrook high taking steroids, and one of the guys on the football team claimed his brother worked out with the source. 

For all the connecting threads, something still felt off. Or maybe FP just didn’t want to believe it. But how in the hell would Fred have gotten mixed up with drugs? He was one of the most clean-cut people FP knew, had even been known to turn down weed. True, Alice had said drugs and _alcohol_ \- booze went hand in hand with team sports, enough that FP had lost count of the number of times he had used winning or losing as an excuse to black out. He couldn’t see it for Fred, though, who regularly passed out after one shot. As for drugs - they spent nearly all their waking hours together, including the time before and after practices. FP would have noticed if Fred had some kind of drug problem. He knew his best friend’s moods better than he knew himself. He would know. 

_Or would you?_ an ugly voice in his mind speaks up. _You don’t know anything. He was gone for three months, and you didn’t know anything at all. You didn’t do anything. You can’t figure it out. You’re a horrible friend. You’re worthless._

If there was one thing FP couldn’t stand, it was not knowing something like this. “The Sisters,” he speaks up abruptly, before he can censor himself. “What is it, Fred? Why’d they send you there?” 

A silence follows this question. Alice glares at FP like he’d committed an unspeakable act. Fred just looks scared and guilty, staring doe-eyed at FP before he wets his lips and looks down at the ground. For all the fuzziness in Fred’s condition, FP recognizes this emotion clearly. Shame. Guilt tears into his heart and doesn’t let go. 

“I’m not -- you don’t have to be embarrassed,” he stumbles awkwardly, shifting his tone. “I didn’t mean to - I just - I wanted to- Is it - is it a rehab, or-?” 

“I guess.” Fred’s lips barely move as he stutters out the word. “R-rehab.” 

“Hey.” FP wraps his arms around him and pulls him into a hug, resting his chin on the top of Fred’s baseball cap. Fred nestles into his chest, his hands interlocking behind FP’s back. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes into the crown of Fred’s head. “I just wanna know what we’re dealing with.” 

Fred releases him and takes a cautious bite from the end of his hot dog, sending crumbs tumbling onto FP’s shirt. He chews mechanically, his gaze locked on the horizon. FP worries momentarily that he’s going comatose again, but a faint light stays in his eyes, as though he’s thinking hard and struggling with whatever’s on his mind. 

“Does anyone want some real food?” asks Alice, who's been looking back and forth between them. “I know I do.” 

Fred shrugs, his shoulder scraping FP’s chest. FP steps back from him, though it hurts to do so. It wouldn’t be prudent to attract stares in the parking lot of the gas station: the three of them with their map splayed out on the hood of a rusted-out VW bus make an odd enough trio as it is. 

“I’ve got about a hundred dollars,” FP says to Alice over Fred’s head. 

Alice thumbs through her wallet. “I’ve got sixty. And a bit more in my bag.” 

“I have thirteen,” Fred speaks up in a flat voice. Both FP and Alice look at him in surprise. “Dollars.” 

“Enough for lunch, then,” Alice says decisively. FP tries to follow her lead, to put everything out of his mind but the present. “Let’s go.” 

* * *

They buy lunch at a small cafe, sitting closely together on the patio so that Fred’s thigh is pressed tightly against FP’s hip, their elbows knocking when either of them moves an arm. They’re positioned so that they can bolt to the van if necessary, eating in the open air next to the parking lot, but Fred’s nervously roaming eyes never land on any danger, and he eventually calms enough to eat and speak. It’s nowhere near his frantic paranoia of that morning, and while his anxious glances keep forcing FP to scan for danger in turn, the three of them feel secure overall. Alice has their map unfolded on the table, and FP hopes to any curious eyes that they only look like college students on an end-of-year trip. He keeps a hand resting on Fred’s back throughout the meal. 

Alice buys fish and chips, FP a burger and fries. Fred has soup, ignoring the quesadilla Alice orders for him until FP, remembering how he’d picked at the hot dog, cuts it into bite-sized pieces. Fred picks absentmindedly at the chunks of dough and cheese while they’re talking, a few making their way into his mouth. FP counts it as a victory. 

Alice is reading the legend at the bottom of the map, her blonde head bent over the pink and green symbols that indicate points of interest. FP is about to make a snide comment about how much time they have for sightseeing when she looks up at Fred, her hair tumbling out of her eyes. 

“I bet you want a shower more than anything,” she says, and Fred nods eagerly. FP’s heart breaks at the hopeful look in his eyes. 

“What do we do?” he asks. As momentarily safe as they might feel, he’s not eager to wander around this township looking for a YMCA. “We can afford a hotel for tonight, but after that…” 

Alice points at the map again. “If we don’t mind doing more driving, there’s a national park a little further north. They’ll have campgrounds and shower facilities. It’ll be isolated, private-” 

“Cheap,” FP interrupts. Alice nods. 

“I think it’s our best bet.” 

“Showers,” repeats Fred, understanding. “We can sleep in the van.” 

“Exactly.” Alice begins to refold the map, the nervous look in her eyes a contrast to her purposeful fingers. “Most campgrounds let you drive up. They won’t know we won’t have tents and shit with us. We can hide out there for awhile.” 

“Good,” says Fred faintly, rooting out another chunk of the quesadilla. He leans briefly against FP, who wraps an arm around him, and drops the piece of food back on the table. 

“Let’s go if we’re going,” says FP, aware of Fred’s tiredness. He gives Fred’s shoulders a squeeze, but the muscles in his friend’s arm and back stay so tense that it’s like squeezing stone. 

They pull out onto the road that weaves through the centre of town, eventually locating the sign for the highway past a proud wrought-iron bridge that hangs over a bubbling waterfall of rapids. 

“They’re pretty,” says Fred softly, looking out the window. “I haven’t seen outside in so long.” 

Alice and FP glance at one another, waiting for more. But Fred only leans his head against FP’s arm and closes his eyes again. By the time they reach the main highway, he’s asleep, or at least pretending. 

* * *

“It’s called Sand Pines National Park,” Alice reminds FP for the third time, slowing down to allow a faster car to pass the VW bus. The grey convertible zips around them with a sharp blast of its horn, disappearing into the horizon. “There should be a sign for it coming up.” 

“I know,” FP gripes, though admittedly he hasn’t been watching the road at all. He looks down at Fred’s head, tucked onto his chest, his baseball cap pulled low over his brow and his eyes shut. FP places two fingers gently against the side of his pale neck, anxiety thrumming in his veins until he finds the familiar beat against his fingers. 

He's been checking Fred's pulse periodically during the drive, anxious about his visibly poor health. It seems to be holding steady, but an overwhelming fear creeps back whenever he fixates on Fred’s drawn face, his cool skin. He’s taken his pulse ten times in the past five minutes. 

"What's normal?" he asks, watching the face of the wristwatch Alice had dutifully removed for him. 

"How should I know? You're the football player."

"You did track and field," FP gripes back, his eyes on the second hand. "You're twice as likely to need to know for running than for football.”

"Resting heart rate is sixty to a hundred," Fred mumbles, his eyes still closed. He's been awake and listening to them bickering. The faintest flicker of an amused smile curls the corner of Alice’s mouth, and she turns her attention back to the road. FP closes his eyes and counts. 

"You’re on the high end of that, but it’s steady,” he reports gently. 

Fred says nothing, just presses his head a little more firmly into FP's sternum. He's moved beyond just resting his head on FP's shoulder to slumping against his chest, FP’s chin just above the top of his baseball cap. FP’s more than happy to be held as comfort, but the position is making awfully inconvenient feelings rise to the forefront of his mind. The last several hours have been so tense that he’d been briefly able to forget the conflict that always raged in his heart when Fred was around, the secret feelings he’s been nurturing for him that went far beyond friendship. It makes him feel crushingly guilty, especially now, like he’s taking advantage of something. 

FP had never known such staunch, unwavering loyalty as the friendship he had with Fred, not even from the gang that had such terms written into its rules with blood. Fred’s friendship was the kind he’d only ever heard about before, the kind that only existed in books you read for english class. It barely made sense to him sometimes, how someone like Fred could be so confidently devoted to someone like him. How happy he was when they were together. 

And yet it hadn’t been enough for him, somehow. Because buried beneath the loyalty and the trust there was love. Romantic love. Aches and urges to hold his hand, to lift his mouth to Fred’s and kiss him. The way he felt looking into those chocolate brown eyes, like space and time had ceased to exist. 

And then there was the summer - the summer they’d fixed the van. But they didn’t talk about it anymore, so maybe it was nothing. Or maybe it was everything. He was too scared to know. He was scared to lose real friendship like that. Or maybe he was only afraid to hear Fred say he didn’t feel that way. 

FP suspects that he doesn’t. How could he? It was FP that was sick, not him. But hearing it in Fred’s voice would break him. 

One of Fred’s arms is wrapped loosely around himself so that his hand and wrist are brushing FP’s thigh. Every time the van jostles them, he feels electric currents shoot up from the place of contact. When Fred sits up sleepily, rubbing his eyes, FP lets out a breath he’d been holding for a long time. 

They pull over and switch drivers, and Fred curls up against the far window, just slightly beyond where FP’s fingers can search out a pulse in his neck. He can’t tell if Fred’s truly sleeping or disassociating, retreating to some far-away place in his mind away from all this. FP’s been in that position before, knows what it’s like to fade outside your body. He keeps sneaking worried glances at him, something Alice would probably yell at him for - _keep your eyes on the road_ \- if she hadn’t been doing the same thing herself. 

They follow the signs for the Sand Pines campsite without trouble. Pulling up to the campground, FP parks them by the side of the bumpy dirt road. Alice lets out a deep breath, shoulders slumping. Fred doesn’t react at all. 

“We’ll just be a minute,” she says to Fred, who’s slumped as though sleeping against the window, but staring through the glass with his eyes open. “Then we’ll get you a shower, and we can all rest for a bit.” 

The front office of the campground is a pine-walled cabin, crammed with shelves of camping equipment for sale and a faded bulletin board papered with ads. The red-haired man at the register looks haughtily at them as they approach, clearly unhappy that their appearance had interrupted a conversation he was having with someone on the other end of a phone about fishing reels. He places a hand over the mouthpiece and flicks his eyes down to Alice. 

“Yes?” 

“We’d like to rent a campsite for the night,” Alice speaks up. “How much is it?” 

“You have to call two days in advance.” 

Having delivered his piece, he begins to slide his hand away from the mouthpiece of the phone. Alice steps forward, slapping her map down on the cluttered surface of his desk. 

“We did call,” she lies boldly. “The person we talked to said we could just come up and get one, since we’re only staying overnight. We’ll be gone in the morning.” 

“They were wrong,” he answers flatly, looking less than impressed. “Two days in advance. We’re all booked up for tonight.” 

“It’s barely June. I don’t see why you would be all booked up.” 

The man scratches his face. He’s young: probably in his thirties at most. The plastic name tag on his fishing vest says RANDY. “I can make a reservation for two days from now,” he answers dryly. “Or you can call back and do it with someone else.” 

“Why can’t you at least check and see if you have any empty spots?” Alice counters. “Just for tonight. We don’t need any amenities, just somewhere to park.” 

“It’s our policy-” 

“Can’t you make an exception? We drove all the way here.” 

“If I made an exception for you, I’d have to make it for anyone.” 

Alice folds her arms, and FP recognizes the look that comes into her eyes as the one she gets before she’s really about to unleash a tirade of yelling. He’s almost feeling sorry for this Randy guy when Alice suddenly lets out a wail and rounds on FP with an indignant cry. 

“It’s our anniversary! You promised!” 

FP stares at her, completely flabbergasted. Alice abruptly stomps on his foot, crushing his toes painfully in his shoe. FP coughs awkwardly after a moment of silence and tries to play along. 

“I, uh….babe-” 

Alice is getting into her role, swiping a whole sheaf of papers off the surface of the desk. “Asshole, you always do this! I swear to God, I’ve had enough! All I asked from you is one romantic night! You promised we’d have a campsite and a fire! You’ve been promising we’d have this for weeks! And then you go and forget to make reservations! Now everything is ruined!” 

“Calm down,” FP replies. He’s not going to win any awards for his acting, but Alice is doing enough for both of them. “We’ll just go, and uh-” 

“I bet you never treated Abby like this! Why don’t you go back to her! After all the times you cheated on me! You said things were going to be different!” 

“Look,” the red-haired man speaks up, looking weary and distinctly uncomfortable. “I’ll check and see if we have any empty lots.” 

He heaves a bursting green binder up onto the desk and starts flipping through pages. In a minute he grabs a form off the desk, scribbles a number on the paper, and hands it off to them. 

“Thank you,” snaps Alice, whisking the paper off the desk and giving FP an evil glare. She turns on a dime and flounces out of the cabin, leaving FP behind. 

“Sixty dollars,” Randy says dryly. FP opens his wallet and counts out the money. Randy raises an eyebrow at him as he turns to leave, and mouths _good luck._

“Well, that was excruciating,” FP comments dryly as he steps out of the cabin, Alice hovering with arms folded by the front steps. 

“Oh, please. That was inspired. And who had to pretend to be dating you?” She studies the form as they walk back towards the van. “Campsite 15. Let’s hope it’s private. I’ll sleep in the front of the van, and you two can sleep in the-” 

She stops short, and FP bumps into her. In an instant he saw what had startled her. The front seat of the van, where they had left Fred alone, is completely empty. 

His heart beginning to race, sweat already standing out on his palms, FP bolts for the back doors. Panic is blotting every other thought out of his head, his heart pounding at so violent a rate that it’s briefly nauseating. He skids to a stop, flings the back doors of the van open, and has to grip tight to the edge of one to keep from collapsing. The mattress is bare, the back of the van empty. 

It’s the worst fear he’s ever felt in his life. FP takes two huge steps back, turning in a useless circle, his vision blurry and compromised, his heart so tight and painful in his throat that he can’t breathe. His pulse throbs throughout his whole body like an electric shock, running in current from his heart down to his fingers. One second slips away. Then two. His eyes scan the empty road, the cabin with its cheerful flag. The colours are blurred in front of his eyes. Then-

“Fred!” Alice yells, and FP turns just in time to see his friend emerging from a thicket of trees some six feet away. 

“Where were you?” he can hear himself yelling as he starts to run, his voice loud and panicked. He reaches Fred and throws his arms around him, pulls him tight into his chest until he can’t tighten his arms anymore. He squeezes Fred hard, digging his fingers into his back and arms until his knuckles are white. Alice, out of breath, catches up to them and stands gasping at their side, gripping Fred’s shoulder as though holding him in place. She presses her forehead to his back and lets out a very un-Alice whimper. 

“I had to stretch my legs, I’m sorry,” says Fred and starts to cry. “I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t cry.” FP can feel himself shaking, really shaking, like he’d been in a serious accident or fallen from a great height. The whole ordeal had lasted maybe five seconds, but the intensity of the fear had been something that had jarred him back to his childhood, comparable to his father bursting into his room to hit him, maybe even the horrible forty minutes Senior had once held a gun to his eight-year-old head. 

He hasn’t thought of that moment in years, and it makes him feel weak and heavy, exposed like a nerve. He wants to cry remembering himself, seeing something of a traumatized eight-year-old in Fred’s bright, scared eyes. Fred’s white face crumples in pain. 

“I’m sorry, you two looked so scared...” Fred’s voice hitches and breaks, looking heartbroken and petrified. FP can read a litany of emotions in the tears that rush down his cheeks: sorrow, regret, tiredness, agony. 

FP’s heart stabs with pain. People said that - _my heart hurt._ He’d thought he had known what they meant, that he’d felt something of the kind before: watching Fred dance with a girl, maybe, or sleep lovely and peaceful in his bed after a party. But right now there’s a sharp physical agony searing a hole somewhere straight through his ribcage, and he knows he’s never felt anything like this. It feels like being set on fire, but inside of him, and huge. He can feel it all the way in his teeth, and he’s not sure his legs can keep him up. 

“It’s okay,” whispers FP, rubbing Fred’s back. The pain in his chest blots out his vision briefly, and then begins to ebb. He feels faintly like throwing up again, and presses his closed lips to Fred’s shoulder. Fred wipes his tears. Alice lets out a shaky breath, touching Fred tenderly on the cheek. When FP finally releases him, she crowds in for a hug, and then quickly steps back, smearing a hasty tear off her cheek. 

“Let’s get in the van,” she says abruptly. For once, her haste to get things done is a comfort. “The sooner we get out of sight, the better.” Her tone softens, and FP can tell she’s in pain too. “We’re not doing any good standing here crying.” 

Alice drives. FP sits with a fist digging into the painful part of his chest like he’s holding his lungs in. Fred’s thigh is pressed on top of his thigh again, Fred’s little fingers leaving nail marks on his arm. He’d noticed earlier that Fred’s fingernails were ragged and bloody, chewed down into stumps. That and the weakness of his hands are probably the only things keeping him from drawing blood from FP’s bicep. 

They follow a dirt road to a little clearing marked by a wooden post. _15_ has been painted onto the wood in peeling yellow. The clearing is blanketed by a thick circle of trees, and the road is barely visible beyond. In the far distance he can see a splash of red canvas, someone else’s tent, but there’s no way the people to whom it belongs could see them. It’s indeed secluded, anonymous, safe. The trees that circle their site leave an oblong gap through which they can see the sky. 

A carpeting of soil and pine needles thickens the forest floor, a man-made fire pit sitting in the centre beside a wooden log. Alice drives the van into the site, the back doors facing the fire pit. She climbs out the driver’s door and opens the back of the van, finally sitting down alone on the rear bumper, her backpack between her feet. FP follows her, slowly, Fred glued to his side again. It’s not until he reaches the place she’s sitting that he realizes she’s crying, her face in her hands. 

She looks up when she senses FP near her, wiping her tears as though they’d never happened. To his surprise, she turns her jacket pockets inside out and starts removing a good amount of meal replacement bars, the same ones he’d seen stacked at the cash register of the camp store. 

“Dinner,” she says wryly, pulling four or five more out from under her shirt and tossing them onto the dingy mattress. FP’s always been a handy pickpocket, but he’s the first to admit Alice is the champ. He’d never seen her pocket even one. She nods at Fred. “Why don’t you take him to find the showers?” 

“Okay,” says FP, because Fred perks up almost imperceptibly at the mention of a shower. He can’t pretend to know what Fred’s been through, but he’s been properly dirty before, and he knows how awful it is. He helps Fred sit carefully on the bumper of the van, crouching down to his knees to help him into a pair of sandals. 

“Here.” Alice roots in her backpack, bulging with now-irrelevant school books, and finally slings a drawstring bag onto FP’s shoulder. “It’s my gym stuff. We left before last period.” 

FP opens the bag. Shampoo, socks, shorts, soap, deodorant, another shirt. “Thanks,” he says sincerely. As frustrated as he’d been when Alice had inserted herself into this rescue mission, he owed her a lot. He wasn’t too proud to admit it, not when Fred needed everything they could give. He grabs a striped beach towel from the back of the van and throws it over his shoulder. “C’mon,” he says with more gusto than he feels, gently nudging Fred’s arm. “Let’s go.” 

Fred hangs close to FP as they walk back down the path, his shoulder brushing FP’s shoulder, occasionally almost tripping him with their proximity. A white sign nailed to a nearby tree points them in the right direction. On the path they pass a young couple walking a dog - Fred shrinks slightly back from them, moving behind FP and breathing down his neck. The couple walks on without even looking at them, holding hands. Fred’s fingers tug tentatively on FP’s wrist, like he’s a child afraid of being separated from a parent. 

The showers are housed in a low brick building set back from the road, each shower in its own enclosed stall. The tiled walls are clean, but each fluorescent light is blotted with a liberal sprinkling of dead insects. Fred takes Alice’s gym bag from FP and goes silently into the end stall. 

“I’ll be right here if you need me,” FP calls, hovering awkwardly outside the door. He doesn’t want Fred to feel like he’s standing here listening to him shower, but he’s petrified to go too far away. He compromises by leaning against the wall in a pantomime of nonchalance, beginning to bite his own nails for lack of anything to do. He hears the water turn on. 

“Oh,” Fred gasps from beyond the wooden door, not pain or fear, but just startled, like maybe a bug had crawled across his foot. “It’s warm.” 

He doesn’t say anything else. FP listens to the water running for a very long time, weak streams of it trickling below the stall door and down towards a grate in the cement floor. After about twenty minutes, the water turns off. Fred pulls the towel down from over the door, and the drawstring bag rustles within the stall as he opens it. 

When he emerges he’s wearing Alice’s gym clothes, looking all the more pale and vulnerable for being clean. His eyes are distinctly red and bloodshot, as though he had been crying hard and silently during the shower. His brown hair is tangled and wet. 

It’s a painful image: the normalcy of Fred with damp hair, pulling him back to summers spent swimming at the beach, the lake, the pool, the swimming hole. Gym classes, locker rooms, baseball games, sleepovers. The time he successfully coached Fred to the top of the rope climb, which was only a few months ago, but feels like a lifetime. The tag is sticking out the back of his shirt, and FP gently tucks it in for him as he walks past. The back of his neck is an angry pink from the sun, already starting to peel. He combs Fred’s hair out with his fingers, and Fred shivers as he touches him. 

There’s a flat, rectangular mirror against one wall, not unlike those in the gymnasium changing rooms at school. Fred walks up to it and presses his hands flat against it, staring for a long moment into the eyes of his reflection. He looks disturbed when he steps away. 

“I’ll tell you everything,” Fred says hoarsely, averting his tormented eyes from his reflection. “One day. I promise. But I- I can’t yet.” 

A hollow pit opens up in FP’s heart. He steps towards Fred and wraps his arms around him, inhaling the smell of shampoo in his damp hair. “It’s okay,” he whispers, swallowing the lump in his throat. “It’s okay. Ready to go back?” he asks gently, trying to nudge his friend back to reality. 

“I’m so tired,” Fred replies faintly. His hand touches the wall, and FP notices it shaking. He looks at FP as though seeing him again for the first time, the lines in his face even more pronounced. His voice is barely a whisper. “I can’t.” 

FP pauses momentarily, then crouches down in front of Fred so that his shoulders are even with Fred’s hips. They’ve done this before, albeit in more cheerful conditions, and Fred climbs onto his back without hesitation, wrapping his arms around FP’s neck. 

“Thank you,” he whispers into FP’s back, somewhere between his shoulder blades. Either his knees or his hip bones are driving painfully into FP’s sides, so that it’s like being jabbed with a dull knife. FP carefully adjusts his grip and begins to walk back in the direction they’d come, Alice’s gym bag swinging against his thigh with every step. He would have carried him forever. It didn’t matter how long they had to walk. 

When they reach the campsite, he piggybacks him across the clearing and lowers Fred gently onto the bumper of the van. Fred rifles anxiously through the bag FP had been carrying until he finds his worn-out baseball cap again. He shoves it back onto his clean head, hunching his shoulders up tightly to his ears. Alice places the quilt back around his shoulders while FP unwraps a meal replacement bar and puts it in Fred’s hand. Fred raises it to his mouth automatically and nibbles at the edge. 

They start a small fire together, using wood from the brush and the pages of Alice’s spiral-bound notebook. Fred sits wrapped in his quilt on the back of the van, stretching one shaking arm limply out towards the warmth. FP stares across the fire as darkness begins to fall, watching the flickering light in Fred’s eyes. His expression is haunted and unreadable, the quilt sliding loosely off his shoulders. Every time it slips off entirely, one of them gets up and tucks it back in. 

No one feels compelled to tell ghost stories, no one does much of anything except stirring the fire and passing the protein bars around. When it’s properly dark Fred gets up and crawls silently into the van, curling up on the mattress with the thick quilt wadded around his body. FP lays down next to him and stares through the skylight into the blackness. Alice throws dirt on the fire and climbs into the front seat about twenty minutes later, stretching out across the bench seat with her bookbag as a pillow. FP can hear the three of them breathing in the dark. 

He touches the dirty mattress, runs his hand along the seam like he’d done a thousand times, all the music festivals and trips to the beach, sleeping on this flat-as-a-pancake mattress that might as well be the floor. Something has ended sometime in the past twenty-four hours, they all know it. Maybe their childhood, but FP didn’t have much of that to begin with. 

Fred’s hope, though, Fred’s innocence - that had seemed to be eternal. Now it’s gone. His hatred for Fred’s parents is so thick that the nausea comes back, the drilling pain under his ribs. He hates them so much that it hurts, even if he doesn’t know why. 

Fred rolls over onto his back, his eyes closed and the hat still on. FP shuts his eyes and waits for sleep, but it doesn’t come. Stars begin to appear beyond the sunroof, brighter here outside the lights of town. Beyond the walls of the van, the only sound is the forest: snapping twigs, rustling leaves. He wonders how long it will take for people to put two and two together: Fred escaping, and then he and Alice leaving school. It shouldn’t be long, but he’s not afraid. He wouldn’t let them harm Fred, he feels with an oddly misplaced confidence that any assailant would die first. He’d die protecting him before anyone laid a hand on Fred again. 

The forest settles. FP feels as wide awake as ever, turning questions over in his mind. A series of images keep flashing in his head: Fred sprinting into his arms by the side of the highway, Fred’s blind terror when the police had sped past, Fred crying as freely as a child, Fred staring into the horizon with blank, empty eyes. 

“Do you want to know why they sent me there?” Fred asks in a hushed voice, hours after FP had thought he was asleep. When he tears his gaze away from the cold pinpricks of light above them, the inside of the van is a dark shadow. It must be past midnight. FP stares at the indistinct shape that is Fred’s body and hears Alice hold her breath. Apparently none of them had been sleeping. 

“Why?” FP asks in a voice he doesn’t recognize. 

Fred takes a deep breath, and then says it all at once. “I gave Mark Sorly a blowjob.” 

FP sits up like he’s been released from a spring, blood rushing to his ears and thumping there, his body’s physiological response to being punched in the face. 

“Mark S- Mark Sorly the shortstop for Central High?” 

Fred’s still flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. “Yeah.” 

Alice is sitting up too, FP can see her eyes shining in the light from the open door. Fred keeps talking in a blank voice, as though recounting the plot of a movie that hadn’t been particularly good. 

“His coach caught us. We were out behind the equipment shed at their school.” He takes a deep, tired breath. “His parents told my parents. And my parents -” 

He doesn’t finish that thought. He doesn’t have to. FP lets out a noise he’d be ashamed of in a different circumstance, halfway between a moan and a cry. Alice, who had held her tongue until then, breathes in audibly before speaking. 

“So the Sisters of Quiet Mercy is a -”

She leaves the sentence dangling in the dark of the van. Fred keeps looking at the same place on the ceiling, oblivious to the intent stares burning into his face. 

“Conversion --rehab.” he answers in the same flat tone, struggling with the words. “For - for-” 

Silence again. Even the branches seemed to have stopped whispering, the stars twinkling impersonally down from the night sky. Fred draws in a wet jagged breath. 

“And I am,” he says raggedly. “I am, so…” 

He takes several gulping breaths like he’s crying, but FP can see his face in the starlight, and his cheeks are dry. There had been no shame in the admission, but as his dark eyes flicker to FP’s just once, FP sees it well way down deep in the chocolate brown. He searches for Fred’s hand but can’t bring himself to squeeze. He touches his arm instead, the crook of his scrawny elbow. 

“Anyway,” Fred says flatly, shying away from FP’s touch. “I’m going to sleep.” 

“Fred-” says Alice abruptly, the word a choked sob. She draws in a sharp, shaky breath and begins to speak insistently. “Sweetie, there’s nothing wrong with you-” 

“I’m going to sleep,” says Fred again, in an oddly confident voice that suggests there’s no room for argument. He turns over, pulling the quilt up over his head. “That’s all.” 

The silence that follows beats against FP’s eardrums like pounding surf. As if from far away, he hears the aged upholstery crinkle as Alice gradually lays back down. Fred doesn’t move, his face turned to the wall and his body oddly relaxed under the cocoon of the blanket. His breathing is soft and even. 

FP feels frozen, as though every muscle in his body has been carved from ice. 


End file.
